January 27, 2004
I was reading my friend Daniel's site today, and I noticed he posted a set of rules he received in an e-mail on how to not get your ass kicked in the south. Of course, it was (probably) written all in good fun, so I decided to do the same from a different perspective.
I read over the list, and thought of rebuttals for almost all of them. I didn't cover points 12-15 because they just don't have as much steam as the first eleven, and are borderline nebulous. Therefore, I present my list of 11 rebuttals as a counterpoint.
- Don't order "grits" or "fried chittlins" at The Four Seasons. It's a five-star restaurant. They don't know, and don't care how to make your strange southern dishes. Go suck some crawfish insides somewhere else. Do it here, and you might get fucked up.
- Don't laugh at our names. Just because our names aren't bizarre examples of busted English, or we don't go by our middle names, that doesn't make them funny. It makes them normal. If you laugh at our names, expect to get fucked up.
- If you order a Coke, you'll get a Coke. If you order a Pepsi, you'll get a Pepsi. Don't bitch when you order a Coke and you get a Coke, when you really wanted a Root Beer. We will fuck you up.
- We know our heritage. You can't possibly claim that most of you are more literate than the north, and the few shining examples pointed out (Welty, Williams, Faulkner) don't make up for the majority. We have our own examples as well; Hemingway, Alcott, Whitman, etc. We also can't believe you left out Clemens from your examples. That's fucked up.
- We have even more business sense; Standard Oil, IBM, AT&T, American Express, NBC, Bloomberg. More goods and services are bought and sold in New York than anywhere else in the world. We, of course, have lapses in judgement as every human does, but we won't turn a point on business sense into political bashing. Most politicians are fuck-ups.
- We've gotten over the Civil War. Lee made a decision, Grant won, and our taxes go to Washington. Due to the fact that Longstreet made quite a few tactical blunders in his military career, there's no guarantee that his disagreement with Lee on Pickett's Charge would have made any difference. This, of course, still ignores obvious tactical advantages for the north such as in the case of Little Roundtop. Plain and simple, the south got fucked up.
- Holy hell, it's humid down there.
- We'll order whatever toast we want. Wheat toast is tasty, and if we like it, we'll ask for it. We don't view our choice of breads as a social faux pas. And we probably wouldn't put sugar on grits. Most of us have probably never even seen a grit before.
- Don't make fun of our northern accents. And anyone who fakes an accent, north OR south, should be fucked up. (Unless it's a Boston accent; they deserve to be ridiculed.)
- Don't discuss how much better things are "down south." We've been there, and it's no better.
- Yes, we know how to speak proper English. We speak in this way because it's correct. After all, we don't want to sound like you. We don't care if you don't understand what we are saying.
My asbestos suit is on stand-by.
(11:14)
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